Friday, December 19, 2008

Where to begin? With so many folks coming from opposing camps and ideologies as part of his crew (see the choices of former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, a longtime free trader, as U.S. trade representative, and Rep. Hilda Solis, a free-trade opponent, as labor secretary; article here), either Barack Obama’s presidency will be one of extraordinary forward motion, or it’ll be the equivalent of that old, crude joke about the kid walking around and around in circles ‘cause one of his feet is nailed to the floor. Or it may be something else altogether. Speculation on what it all means, what the next four years will be – all amidst much moaning and hand wringing across the political spectrum – has already become tedious as fuck and the man ain’t even in office yet. And it’s pointless. Until he is in office, until he and his assembled team are writing policy and putting it in effect, until we see what he does (or even can do) to undo not only eight years of colossal fuck-up after colossal fuck-up, not to mention all the last minute lame duck giveaways and coffer pillaging currently taking place, everyone should just shut the fuck up. Everybody’s Miss Cleo, claiming to see the future based on – nothing substantial yet. Full disclaimer (and broken, scratchy record repeating the same refrain) here: I have little faith in any politician, especially one who could actually become president of this country within the current set up of our political apparatus, to really effect “change,” to really be a “visionary.” Many of my friends of all hues, accents and genders look at me aghast and appalled when I say that because, yes, I do include Barack Obama in that statement. I feel the same about any woman, LGBT person, or other person of any other color who might attain the office. As a person, based on what I have seen and read, I like Barack Obama a lot, would love to hang out with him. (If for no other reason than to hang out with Michelle.) As a person, I think he’s cool. And I voted for him. But he’s also a politician, one whose policies and record were / are / were not really all that different from Hilary’s – and his is certainly not really the record of a “progressive.” But without question he was a far better – simply human and humane – choice than McCain. All that to say, the selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at Obama’s inauguration is a big, bitter disappointment. It would be under almost any circumstance. Warren is anti-gay, anti-choice and does not believe in evolution. Backwards than a mug, the very face of the very “America” that lots of folks worked tirelessly to root out and replace. The fact that he actively and with much political currency campaigned to help pass Prop. 8 dumps a lot of salt in a bloody cultural & political wound. Yes, I know – keep your enemies close; this is part of Obama’s vision to hold conversations with folks whose opinions he might not fully share; it’s a way to show those folks who did not vote for him that they are welcome at the table anyway. And so on. And with that line of reasoning, given the red-in-the-face racists that howled and ran to stock up on guns and ammunition when it became clear he was going to win, Obama should extend a speaking invitation to… well, you see where this is going. It’s unfortunate that all the hoopla over Warren has overshadowed the fact that the inaugural benediction will be delivered by Joseph Lowery, a man who according to the media and racist white gays and lesbians is the equivalent of a unicorn – he doesn’t actually exist: He’s Negro, a longtime and iconic Civil Rights activist, devout Christian, and pro-gay and pro-gay-marriage. Negro counter-part to white homophobia. I predict he’ll be amazing. But I don’t buy the argument that having Lowery close what Warren opens is “balance” or “fairness,” though in theory, in its on-paper symmetry and racial dynamic, it is head-spinning in its poetry. Still, that argument suggests an equivalence of value for the ideas the two men espouse and the ideals they stand for. Lowery is a futurist, a visionary. Warren is ass-backwards. He shouldn’t be speaking at any American presidential inauguration, but especially not this one. Why inject more cancer cells into a cancer-riddled body when you’re claiming to be bringing chemo? The one possible silver lining in all this is the fact that hardcore right-wingers are in a possibly base-fracturing tizzy, denouncing Warren as a sell-out and condemning him for legitimizing a “baby-killer,” a “terrorist.” If this potential right-wing fallout is part of some brilliant diabolical plan on Obama's part, I tip my hat to him. It would be a layered political manipulation of the inauguration that pushes the proceedings out of pageantry and feel-good rhetoric into sharp, longterm effects-yielding tool. We shall see.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Lost a few billion in the recent meltdown of the global market? Yeah, that sucks. But you still have your Ninjas. Come celebrate the holiday season & leave the stress of the world behind with New Ninjas on December 19 at the next BLOW POP, the house-party style club thrown by New Ninjas Kim Blackwell (actor & writer), Jason Van Veen ("Boondocks" writer & film maker), Ernest Hardy (film critic, poet and author) and Kim Hill (profiler.)

The night kicks off with some cool short films and a classic episode from one of your favorite vintage Negro sitcoms, and then the Two Kims hit the decks to spin hip-hop, indie r&B, classic soul, disco, and rare groove.

Doors open @ 9pm and there's a $5 cover. The club menu includes catfish, red beans and rice w/ sangria, and more.

Club Fais Do Do is located at 5257 West Adams Blvd. / Los Angeles, CA 90016

Sometimes I think about Great-Uncle Paul who left Tuskeegee,Alabama to become a forester in Oregon and in so doingbecame fundamentally white for the rest of his life, exceptwhen he travelled without his white wife to visit his siblings —now in New York, now in Harlem, USA — just as pale-skinned,as straight-haired, as blue-eyed as Paul, and black. Paul never told anyonehe was white, he just didn’t say that he was black, and who could imagine,an Oregon forester in 1930 as anything other than white?The siblings in Harlem each morning ensuredno one confused them for anything other than what they were, black.They were black! Brown-skinned spouses reduced confusion.Many others have told, and not told, this tale.When Paul came East alone he was as they were, their brother.

The poet invents heroic moments where the pale black ancestor stands upon behalf of the race. The poet imagines Great-Uncle Paulin cool, sagey groves counting rings in redwood trunks,imagines pencil markings in a ledger book, classifications,imagines a sidelong look from an ivory spouse who is learningher husband’s caesuras. She can see silent spacesbut not what they signify, graphite markings in a forester’s code.

Many others have told, and not told, this tale.The one time Great-Uncle Paul brought his wife to New Yorkhe asked his siblings not to bring their spouses,and that is where the story ends: ivory siblings who would notsee their brother without their tell-tale spouses.What a strange thing is “race,” and family, stranger still.Here a poem tells a story, a story about race. -- Elizabeth Alexander

Monday, December 15, 2008

This post should be titled Late Pass, as it’s filled with stuff I’ve been meaning to post about for several weeks, if not longer. And it’s a long one. It also kind of serves as my year-end film & music wrap-up but it’s not really about Top 10 lists or anything. It’s just a quick freestyle of shit that I, while typing this post, can remember liking a lot or being moved by. It’s a cluster-fuck of rambling ideas. "Original programming (posting)" continues after the "station break."

Legends

I devoted a lot of time this year to thinking about cultural legends (across the strata of culture/subcultures), trying to figure what about them was instructive beyond nostalgia, and what was instructive within nostalgia. Etta James, Grace Jones, Q-Tip… Thoughts on the matter tumbled around my head as I worked this year on a Flaunt magazine piece about the Hollywood Bowl, attending a lot of concerts at the venue, including those by such relative newbies as Feist (to whom I really hadn’t paid much attention before) and Paulo Nutini. I became converts for both. At her concert, Feist was an art-school visualist, opening her show from behind a scrim, backlit, her shadow singing a cappella. As the concert progressed, hypnotically surreal images were projected onto the backdrop while she sang her heart out, jammed mightily with her band, and bantered (true wit style) with the crowd. Here’s a clip of her performing in Paris. For his show, Nutini and his band walked onstage in the standard-issue uniform of the day, ‘70s thrift-store garb and dirtily tousled hair, with Nutini clearly already wasted. What is that contrived, over-calculated, alterna-sheep sartorial indifference even meant to convey anymore? (The clip below is from a UK television performance.)

I was ready to dismiss him outright. But the Scot-born singer of Italian descent and his band proceeded to blast through their show with such genuine folk, rock & soul power, and undeniable stage presence that I was on my feet for most of their set. Imagine a son of Otis Redding fronting a rowdy but technically on-point pub band and you have some idea of their live show. Then there was Gnarls Barkley. Goddamn. Fried my brain from the wattage of Cee-Lo (easy candidate for best male singer on the planet, and far beyond the confines of any genre), whose cocksure, big-belly-led stroll onto the fabled stage was validated by vocals he peed – operatic blues / soul / rock wails and arias that transformed the amphitheater into a revival tent spectacle, something that pushed far past the hype and cleverly (and wonderfully) stylized “otherness” of the duo (who are queer in non-sexual but beautiful, powerful senses of the word) into a realm of emotional truth wrapped in jaw-dropping theatricality. (I tend to gush when I'm happy.)

But it was Etta James who literally made my jaw drop. Her show was far from the best I saw this year, her voice having been ravaged by time (giving it a grainier bluesiness), which often made her control of her celebrated instrument unsteady. She frequently lost the audience by doing lesser known (and lackluster renditions of) tunes from her repertoire while sabotaging arrangements of the familiar classics. That’s not to say that there weren’t some lovely moments, some powerful bits of singing. But what I most remember was the high-raunch content. For almost every song, no mater how mournful or reflective, Etta pantomimed sucking dick. She shaped her hand like she was holding a penis of massive girth (hey, if you’re gonna dream, dream big) and then proceeded to lick the imaginary shaft and head over and over. And over again. She repeatedly spread her thighs to furiously stroke her crotch. She exaggeratedly fondled her breasts. Fans of Etta know this behavior is not new but I just assumed (ageist on my part, I guess) that someone creeping up on 300 years old (though she looks amazing; slim and fit; beautiful face; hair laid) would tone it down a bit. I shuddered when she introduced the band with, These are my two sons… Now, Etta “Jamesetta Hawkins” James, how you just gon’ suck invisible dick in front of your own offspring? This concert was long before the film Cadillac Records was anywhere close to being in a theater but I remember thinking even then that there was no way the sexless Beyonce, who portrays Etta in the film, would have the ovaries to play this aspect of Etta. It’s not just Yonce who lacked those ovaries, however, but the film’s weak script. Here is an extended version of my review that ran in the LA Weekly:

Although the real-life based but fact-challenged Cadillac Records stars heavyweights Jeffrey Wright (typically fantastic in his portrayal of Muddy Waters), Oz’s Eammon Walker (as a gruffly commanding Howlin’ Wolf), Mos Def (whose Chuck Berry nearly walks away with the film), Columbus Short (who easily steals the scenes Mos doesn’t) and Adrien Brody (all moist-eyed empathy as Chess Records founder Leonard Chess), the hovering question was always how well Beyonce would do as Etta James. She’s adequate. In this film about the rise and fall of legendary music label Chess Records and its stars, Yonce cusses up a storm, wields her lushly voluptuous body (still all wrong for the roundness of Etta) like a WMD, and navigates an emotional drug OD scene without embarrassing herself. But when she performs James classics “At Last” and a well-placed “I'd Rather Go Blind,” her limitations and the film’s snap into focus. Beyonce’s pop-soul voice lacks the earthy, evocative carnality and gritty pathos of James, and when Yonce tosses her signature yodel-riffing in one classic tune your ears die a little. Similarly, director Darnell Martin (I Like it Like That) races through the script’s sometimes painfully true but over-familiar bullet points – R&B is built on the dreams of white immigrant sons and Black sharecropper descendents; white appropriation of Negro creativity is played out in boardrooms and in the thievery of style and ideas; soul music and the blues are sounds of Negro self-affirmation – with a brisk superficiality that leaves crucial plot points unresolved, and refuses to engage the dark side of Leonard Chess’ paternalism. The film is frustrating because it’s filled with loaded symbolism, imagery and actions that it leaves hanging, leeching the embedded emotion without fully earning the dramatics it’s going for. Take the scene where one of Muddy’s side-pieces drops their infant daughter with his “wife,” who oh-so-gently (saintly, even) weeps while it slowly dawns on a drunken Muddy what has happened. We never again see the girlchild, never learn if her mom came back for her, if she was simply absorbed into the family or how her presence affected the dynamic of the household. Cadillac’s screenplay tries so hard to squeeze in so much with its quick-sketch approach to history and character that it’s filled with such dropped balls, seemingly unaware that its half-baked treatment of Negro lives makes it guilty of some of what it claims to critique. Only the acting prowess of Wright, Mos Def and Columbus Short makes the film watchable, makes some of those quick sketches actually resonate.

The product Beyonce (is that redundant?) and the film Cadillac Records share the same basic flaw. They possess no depth. Each is a tapestry of assorted cultural signifiers draped over a void, and whose makers & bean counters bank on (or pray for) the audience thinking something significant is being signified; the audience's hoped for and frequently triggered Pavlovian assumption is the loophole out of anyone actually doing the work of coming up with meaning or something thoughtful. It’s a way to avoid making a statement for fear someone might be offended, some potential shopper might not shop. Cadillac’s racial outrage is remedial (Racism bad!) though hilariously pungent in Mos Def’s line-readings, which threaten to nudge the film into substance but are reined in to settle for laughter; the film's depicted clashes of black masculinities – the various Negro male wounds, survival techniques, strengths and weaknesses – give the film some heft but they’re too underdeveloped to really throw the punch they could and should. Instead, you all but feel the film contort itself to make Leonard Chess some sort of hero even as a more complicated truth keeps edging forth and being shoved back. (As has been pointed put elsewhere, his brother Phil – crucial to the label’s existence and success – is nowhere to be found in the film, reportedly because he wouldn’t sell the rights to his life story.) Similarly, Beyonce’s legendarily substance-free press interviews are anchored in the determination to not possibly turn off any demographic in her quest for a spot on pop's Mt. Olympus. Having made it clear that she hungers for and is determined to achieve icon status, she's repeatedly riffed on (sorry, paid homage to) all the greats to whom she nakedly desires comparison: Tina Turner, Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand. She wants to be a triple-threat (singer/actress/dancer), longs to be a fashion icon, curries favor with the kids… she has lusted to walk a ballroom floor. The most interesting thing about her (and this positions her as a daughter of Madonna) is that she is a Borg – effortlessly absorbing affect / gestures / poses from assorted cultural terrains and assimilating them into her steely efficient being. The single “If I Were a Boy,” is her pulling on sensitive-white-girl-singer-songwriter drag, intoning the words as though they were written in some foreign language she’s mastered phonetically, and then confusing (as do so many of her peers) volume for emotion. She has no connection to the song save for the fact that it’s a market-calculated move intended to convey her musical range and inner complexity; in fact, it underscores the converse. When the “Single Ladies” video first dropped, sharp-eyed mainstream fans noted it was a “tribute” to the choreography of Bob Fosse. But “the children” lovingly and admiringly noted that Miss B was replicating some very specific subculture moves – theirs. Like Madonna with her own highly profitable appropriation of colored faggot innovation in “Vogue,” Beyonce is doing a masterful fusion of “high” culture and “low,” of mainstream and margin, and the drag-queen-centric “Single Ladies” video quickly outpaced the actual single as a cultural phenomenon.

The 10 Best “Single Ladies” Clips (in random order)...

10)Beyonce’s original clip. Highlights: the stretch from :53-1:00, and the 2:58 mark, where the camera is focused on Be’s upper body but there’s the suggestion of a funky breakdown taking place just below. Be sure to check out the very end, after the trio finishes dancing and Yonce's heavy breathing from the strenuous routine suggests that she’s human after all... until you realize that’s exactly what the robot wants you to think.

9) Beyonce shows she has a sense of humor and can actually be quite charming in this Saturday Night Live spoof of the video, featuring Justin Timberlake.

8)The OG tribute clip. Shane Mercado was, I think, the first and certainly still one of the best to do his take on the clip. Damn near flawless. He gains points for the way he fills in editing bay blackout moments in Beyonce’s clip. He loses a few points because he did that shit barefoot. Beyonce was in heels.

7)This clip of Mercado performing “Single Ladies” on the Bonnie Hunt show has him spliced in with the original video. I love the audience’s enthusiasm and support for him.

6) “Single Ladies” gospel edition. This bit is far too long but very funny.

4) I was beginning to wonder if heterosexual women actually listened to Beyonce anymore. This version cleared that up. If I were actually ranking the clips, this one would actually be lower on the list. But I felt sorry for them; there’s so little hetero / biologically female being repped on here. And of course black girls ain't gonna be denied a chance to get that hair toss & flip in…

3) Who says there’s no support for faggotry in the Negro community? Makael’s flaming ass is joined by Ray-Ray, BeBe, NeNe and a random thug from down the block who just wandered into the living room while this version was being shot. Nothing but love.

Ernest Hardy has long been the culture critics’ critic, a rare writer whose every opinion we read and debated and measured our own against. Blood Beats: Vol. 2 shows why: the expansive mind, the humanistic ear, the timely question, the passionately committed voice. There may be no better guide through pop’s image-storm of identities than Mr. Hardy.—Jeff Chang, "Can't Stop, Won't Stop;" editor of "Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop"

I’m not sure whether Ernest Hardy is a pen name or not but his writing is everything his name implies. His dissections of pop culture are neatly carved into well-thought proportions over which he pours a tangy, sometimes biting, down-home styled gravy. To read his work is to think twice. He raises the question that only someone who truly believes in the power of art would seek to answer.—Saul Williams

Ernest Hardy’s gift as a cultural critic is his ability to listen. Whether it be in an interview with a filmmaker, the songs on a pop album, or literary prose and poetry floating off the page, Mr. Hardy hears, feels, and then filters through his own heart and mind the stuff of possibility. His words are not the answer, but the beginnings of deep questions. His analysis bubbles above mediocrity like spring water quenching the thirst of those of us who are parched for a way to understand what it means to create and what it means to consume from the slipstream that is our contemporary culture.—Cauleen Smith, director of "Drylongso" and professor of film at Massachusetts College of Art

Ernest Hardy’s talent and reputation as one of the preeminent critics working today are beyond reproach, but with Blood Beats: Vol. 2, he establishes himself as a singular force in contemporary cultural criticism.—Mark Anthony Neal, author of "Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic"

For anyone interested in the historical significance of Black cultural production, from commercial to indie, Ernest Hardy’s "Blood Beats: Vol. 2" is a must read. Witty as hell, an erudite critic, the brotha knows his shit. Whether it’s cinema or music, his prose makes you want to grab your iPod and experience the visceral connections between art, love, sexuality, politics and the sacrosanct role of blackness in the entertainment industry. OK, this academic lesbian fell in love with the gay boy journalist.—Phyllis J. Jackson, Ph.D, filmmaker, "Comrade Sister: Voices of Women in the Black Panther Party"

If you didn’t watch the entire Grace Jones clip that opened this post, go back and check it out, and stay on till the end. The moment when the 60-year-old iconoclast lifts her skirt and starts thrashing it around is pure Grace – uncalculated calculation, a dash of madness in the performance mix, something dangerously human being slipped through a persona that has always been larger than life, fearlessly self-possessed and completely unconcerned with chart position or mainstream acceptance. True legend; earned status without shameless campaigning for the position. Her Hurricane album was one of my favorites of the year. Other highlights for me:

1) Erykah Badu / New Amerykah. What more can I say? I love this woman. I’m too far gone to be objective. She could belch over a sub-par old Dilla track and I’d buy it. But this CD speaks so much to the state of Blackness in America right now. It’s a prayer, hymn, chant, plea, patient caress for a people for whom there is not much patience. (Oh, that’s right, Obama’s the president…) “Soldier” shoulda been a single. “Master Teacher,” “That Hump,” and “My People” resonate more and more everyday. Special thanks to Alex Demyanenko for the DVD hook-up.2) Raphael Saadiq / The Way I See It. This shoulda been a huge hit. Huge. Great songwriting, career-best impassioned singing, Saadiq channeled so many soul man greats (Cooke, Gaye, Mayfield) without succumbing to mere karaoke posturing, with lyrics encompassing aches ranging from those of the heart to those wrought by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. 3) Jamie Lidell / Jim.4) Sam Sparro / Sam Sparro.5) Estelle / Shine.6) TV on the Radio / Dear Science.7) Amos Lee / Last Days at the Lodge.8) Q-Tip / Renaissance.

9-10) The various Philly International re-issues and anthologies put out by Sony Legacy this year: O’Jays, Teddy Pendergrass, LaBelle, the Jacksons.

*************************************************************************************Video of the Day

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

I still recall the very, very first House track I heard. It was some lil' cheaply done thing, a generic tune badly pressed on really shitty vinyl, the music coming through the aging speakers of a friend's old home stereo system. I was unimpressed. I actually thought I hated House music based on that. Flash forward a little bit and I'm at a club with friends, a familiar bass-thump wafts out to greet us as we stand in line to get in the club. We stepped inside and... life began. Where you hear the music, and how you hear it, makes all the difference in the world... House ain't my first love. That would be real r&b music, the stuff made up until maybe the late '70s. But House is my drug. It was the transformation. The music that utterly changed how I see the world, how I process and manifest my politics, my aesthetics. As I prepare to cocoon & hibernate and write my next book, pulling in the cultural reserves I'll feast on while in the cave, I find myself stockpiling the House. I don't want contemporary ironic recreations. I want the real shit, sincere, vulnerable, soulful, exquisitely laid out even as some of the elements (a singer's off-key singing; a cheap ass keyboard) underscore that this is very much a human undertaking.

Some huge blasts from the MURKy past that I'm (re)feeling at the moment:

Sunday, December 07, 2008

My fumes are running on fumes and I can't seem to get ahead of the demands of the too many projects on which I'm working. So of course I've been wasting a lot of time surfing back-down-memory-lane on YouTube, revisiting one of my first female video crushes. It was Caron Wheeler who, in the snippets of her dancing, lip-synching to her backing vocals, and just being Caron, caught my eye. She, as part of the duo Afrodiziak along with her partner Claudia Fontaine, added much presence and flavor to these two mid-late '80s videos from two of my favorite artists, Aztec Camera and Elvis Costello. Enjoy. And I hope to get back onboard with a fresh new post by Tuesday. Or Wednesday.

Saturday, December 06, 2008

Erykah Badu's New Amerykah is one of my favorite albums of the year. It just speaks to the issues and struggles of contemporary Black America in a way that resonates powerfully for me. Specific and transcendent. Here's a clip of her performing it live from earlier this year, followed by the lyrics to the album/studio version of the song. I'll be upping a new post soon. Still transcribing and racing to meet some deadlines. Be well...

"Master Teacher"

(dreams, dreams, dreams)

I am known to stay awake(a beautiful world im trying to find)A beautiful world im trying to find(a beautiful world, im trying to find)Ive been in search of myself(a beautiful world) a beautiful worldIts just too hard for me to find(dreams, dreams)Said its just too hard for me to find(dreams, dreams)I am in the search of something new(a beautiful world im trying to find)Searchin' me,Searching inside of youAnd thats fo' real

What if it were no niccasOnly master teachers?I stay woke (dreams dreams)What if there was no niccasOnly master teachers?I stay woke (dreams dreams)What if it was no niccas only master teachers now?I stay woke (dreams dreams)(what if there was no niccas only master teachers now?)I stay woke (dreams dreams)

Even if yo baby aint got no moneyTo support ya baby, you(I stay woke)Even when the preacher tell you some liesAnd cheatin on ya mama, you stay woke(I stay woke)Even though you go through struggle and strifeTo keep a healthy life, I stay woke(I stay woke)Everybody knows a black or white, there'sCreatures in every shape and size(I stay woke)

I have lone to stay awakeA beautiful world im trying to find(a beautiful world im trying to find)See, I am insearch of myself(a beautiful world, im trying to find)Ooh its just too hard for me to find(a beautiful world, a beautiful world)Said it just too hard for me to find(dreams, dreams, dreams)Cuz i'm in the search of something new(a beautiful world im trying to find)Search inside meSearching inside youAnd thats the trill

What if there was no niccasOnly master teachers?(I stay woke)What if there was no niccasOnly master teacher?I stay woke)What if there was no niccasOnly master teachers now?(I stay woke)What if there was no niccasOnly master teacher?(I stay woke)Noo, what if there was no niccasOnly master teachers?

What if there was niccasOnly master teachers now

Teach us, teach us teach us [fade]

What if there was niccas only master teachers now [fade]

I stay woke [fade]

I stay wokeMmmm, heyI stay woke

1,21,2,3,4

Baby sleepy timeTo put her down nowIll be standin' roundTill da sun down

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

"If only one could be sure that every 50 years a voice and a soul like Odetta's would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time"– Maya Angelou, Poet Laureate

From a 2005 NPR story:

Odetta Holmes Felious Gordon has shaped American folk music for more than 50 years. Born in Birmingham, Ala., in 1930, Odetta lost her father at a young age. Her mother remarried and gave the children their stepfather's name, Felious.

At age 6, Odetta moved to Los Angeles, where she began to study music seriously at age 13. While studying opera at Los Angeles City College, she discovered folk music.

I haven’t yet had a chance to check out the current Spin magazine cover story on M.I.A., which was penned by my good friend Lorraine Ali. But seeing the rag on newsstands jarred my memory about a conversation I had at DePaul recently with a student who asked what I thought of M.I.A. I told him I thought she was a poseur but it was okay because I like the pose. When pressed to elaborate, I explained that I like the fact that she places political content front & center of her multi-culti soundwave mash-ups. I hear her music and feel like I’m in a paradoxically gritty, idealized/hyper-stylized underground club or impromptu house-party that could be taking place in a Brazilian favela, a slum in India, or some divey spot in Baltimore. Her music is timely and prescient, foreshadowing and obvious. Still, I tend to like it more in theory than execution. Much of it lacks… something I can’t put my finger on. I almost want to say that her shit is absent soulfulness but that term has a certain connotation I don’t mean. There’s something almost too mathematical about her overall package of music, lyrics and image. And yet, isolated tracks grab me whole. I very much appreciate how she capitalizes on the grating, reflexive and retarding pop culture impulses and mandates that have the machine and its consumers of pre-fabricated culture always foraging for the new, the hip, the next. A musical daughter of Neneh Cherry and Joe Strummer, she capsizes the pirate ship of “globalization” that pulls into ports around the globe, spilling forth trend-chasers that fuck & fuck-over the indigenous, exploit children, rip off cultural traditions and smashes it all into a stew of cool-kid product tagged with the labels “color-blind” and “post-race,” but that actually maintains an age-old status quo. Against musical beds of beats and rhythms pulled from assorted underdog club cultures, she spits lyrics about social struggle and consciousness. As Lorraine wrote me a few days ago, “I love her for stepping out and representing the rest of the world – the ones who make Nike gear for 2 cents an hour.” What’s interesting to me is her shrewd marketing savvy and the tensions said savvy once buzzed around her political and artistic “authenticity.” In the beginning, she let the press run with the stories of her being the daughter of a controversial Sri Lankan revolutionary. She was initially less vocal about having been an art student in London. That omission / shrouding is quite telling, and though I think it’s foolish to dismiss her or her work outright because of it, it does speak to her own anxieties about both the perceived and real privilege of that specific educational background. On the flipside, when you read her press, she definitely knows how to pander to and flatter the “outcasts” for whom she’s been positioned as heroine and role model. She pulls all of that into the mix of her aesthetic, her persona and her carefully set-designed politics. I also find it hilarious and somehow very fitting that her fiancé / the father of her soon-to-be-born baby is Benjamin Brewer, son of Warner Music Chairman Edgar Bronfman – who is a very wealthy, very powerful man. It’s those kinds of layers of irony that I love, and that make me curious to see what she (with her own fledgling record label and clothing line) does next, how she will navigate being the daughter of a revolutionary, the daughter-in-law of a captain of industry, a fashionista label honcho, and the mother of a child born with a silver spoon in its mouth.

Quite a few people have sent me this link to the November 29, 2008 op-ed in the New York Times, titled “Gay Marriage and a Moral Minority,” penned by the Negro writer Charles M. Blow. What an apt surname for a column that blew. Actually, I have to be fair. I didn’t read the whole thing. I couldn’t. I stopped a few paragraphs in. It’s yet another editorial theorizing about why darkies of African descent voted overwhelmingly for Prop 8. The thing is, in the very first sentence, Sir Blow owns up to and even provides a link explaining that black folk “probably didn’t tip the balance” for the proposition’s passing, but then he proceeds to quote and base his whole column on the same widely discredited CNN exit poll that claimed black folks did tip the balance. You can’t have it both ways. This is precisely the kind of sloppy writing and analysis that the NY Times (and they are far from alone) frequently employs when it comes to dealing with Black folks. How can I take you seriously when the very foundation of your thesis is tainted – and your black ass knows it? *************************************************************************************I've been been remiss (CP-Time) in putting up photos from the last installment of Blow Pop, the monthly club that I and my fellow New Ninjas throw once a month at Club Fais Do Do here in LA. Here are just a few images from that night. Click the link below to go to our Facebook photo album and see the whole set. The next Blow Pop is December 19th. You should come.New Ninja Kizzy (singer Kim Hill) moves and grooves with singer Rahsaan Patterson. Kizzy was channeling her inner Kara Walker when she handmade her earrings.

New Ninja Ninjette (Kim Blackwell), in the back, and her girl Mica Camacho (in front) surrounded by some Nuyorican Dreams, including the Legendary Luis Camacho in the upper right corner.

About Me

My work has appeared in LA Weekly, LA Times, NY Times, Vibe, Rolling Stone, Millennium Film Journal, Flaunt, and more. I contributed to the reference books "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" and "Classic Material: The Hip-Hop Album Guide," and have written liner notes for "Chuck D Presents: Louder Than a Bomb;" box-set "Say It Loud: A Celebration of Black Music in America," as well as anthologies by Curtis Mayfield, Chet Baker, Luther Vandross, the Jacksons and Teddy Pendergrass. A Sundance Fellow, I've sat as a juror for the Sundance Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, Palm Springs International Short Film Festival and Los Angeles Outfest, and co-programmed the FUSION Film Festival in LA. Blood Beats Vol. 1, my collection of criticism (interviews / reviews / essays), was published by Red Bone Press in April 2006; it won the PEN/Beyond Margins award in 2007. Blood Beats Vol. 2 was published February 2008. I'm co-editor of the literary anthology War Diaries, which will be published by APLA in summer 2009. I've lectured or appeared on panels at Princeton, Columbia, DePaul, USC and more.